[Python-Dev] ElementTree - Why not part of the core? (fwd) (original) (raw)

Jim Fulton jim at zope.com
Thu Dec 8 23:01:54 CET 2005

skip at pobox.com wrote:

Jim> I hope that packaging progress will someday make it matter much Jim> less whether something is in the standard library.

It undoubtedly will. The point I was trying to raise here is that ElementTree is so much better than the stuff we currently distribute (*) that it should be included in the standard distribution if for no other reason than to discourage use of the current stuff in new applications.

Maybe we should deprecate the current stuff. It's been done before. Of course, much of the current XML support is still useful, if only because lots of existing 3rd-party code depend on it. When we have a packaging system we could move these out of the core without disparaging them and without breaking third-party modules.

Here are a couple perhaps useful BDFL references: http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-December/040928.html http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034881.html In the first, Guido tells a potential submitter to "do the math" to make sure his package is "best of breed". In the second Guido warns that having code in the standard distribution tends to suppress usage of other packages, even though they may be better: We can't put every approach in the core, but putting one package in the core may damage the viability of another, possibly better (for some users) solution. To some extent this has happened with GUI toolkits: the presence of Tkinter in the core makes it harder for other GUI toolkits to compete (leaving aside whether Tkinter is better or not -- it's just not a level playing field).

Well said. +1 I agree with this too. :)

I think that's sort of the reverse of the point I'm trying to make.

But it's one of the reasons why I'd like to see fewer application-level facilities added to the core. I'd rather make it easier to try out different tools and figure out what's best for a particular situation.

ET belongs in the standard distribution to create a level playing field for a module many people feel is superior to the current XML-related modules. Think of it as Pythonic affirmative action. ;-)

I would only think of it as Pythonoc affirmative action if you also included the FourSuite stuff and lxml and ... which, of course, would be bad.

Jim

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